In the 1980s, Brede Arkless, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 66, became of iconic significance in the huge expansion of women's participation in mountain activities.
The first woman to qualify for admission to the elite Union Internationale des Associations de Guides de Montagnes, she went on high-profile all-women expeditions to Himalayan peaks, and guided clients for more than 40 years among most of the world's great mountain ranges.
She did this while raising eight children in a Welsh hillside farmhouse and later, having emigrated to New Zealand with the four youngest, in the Southern alps.
Brede Boyle was born prematurely in Manchester and with the outbreak of the second World War three weeks away, her Dublin parents returned home.
She left school at 14 and as a teenager wandered into the Wicklow Mountains, where she first saw rockclimbers in action on the cliffs at Glendalough. She and her family emigrated to the United States in 1957, but within a year Brede was back, working for a London stockbroker during the week and climbing in Snowdonia and the Lake District every weekend.
When she had to choose between the City of London and the hills, the outcome saw her waitressing in a Lake District hotel, climbing clothes under her uniform and the crags on her doorstep.
By the early 1960s she was working in north Wales as a Mountaineering Association climbing instructor and became only the second woman to qualify as a British mountain guide.
She was a performer with great competence and composure in all branches of mountain activity; a genial character with a sharp, sidelong and deflating wit; a singularly attractive woman, blonde-curled, blue-eyed, lively and of enormous strength which she retained years later.
In 1964, Brede married her fellow mountain guide, Geoff Arkless, and started a climbing school and a family. Eight children arrived during the next 15 years, the whole outfit run with the laughing efficiency and co-operative ethos that were her hallmarks.
Winters in the Scottish mountains and summers in the Alps were the norm.
Her first Himalayan expedition - to the Padar Himalaya with Audrey Whillans and Nikki Clough, while the husbands of the latter two were engaged in the epoch- making ascent of the south face of Annapurna - was in 1970.
Geoff was left at home to look after the children. The trip ended with Brede having to break to Nikki the news of Ian Clough's death in the final days of his expedition.
In 1979, Brede was a member of an all- women expedition to Bakhor Das in the Himalayas.
By the early 1980s, the influence of the women's movement was even filtering into climbing, and the emphasis of Brede's activity changed. She and Geoff never divorced but drifted apart. With the gifted and vibrant feminist rock-climber Jill Lawrence, Brede ran women-only climbing courses.
As the decade progressed, she became increasingly disaffected with the sexist attitudes of Alpine guides. After an all-women international expedition in 1989 to the Karakoram peak of Gasherbrum 2, in 1990 she and her four youngest children left Britain for New Zealand.
As a woman in her 50s and a single mother, she had to adapt to a different climbing environment. To Brede, it spelt opportunity and a work pattern of alternating between southern and northern hemisphere summers.
She guided 22 successful ascents of Mount Cook (3,754m), New Zealand's difficult highest peak, and became a New Zealand citizen in 1995. Her equatorial toing and froing allowed her to make journeys in Garhwal following Shipton's and Tilman's footsteps; to cycle alone on a three-geared ladies' bicycle with a front basket through Cambodia; to climb in Bolivia and Borneo; to take part in an expedition to Chomolungma (Mount Everest) in 2000.
At 65, she was still guiding.
The Christmas before last she was diagnosed with cancer. She rode the 350km over high mountain passes to hospital in Christchurch for exploratory surgery, which revealed that the cancer was inoperable. Last Christmas she was very ill and expected to die.
By the time her daughter Sarah arrived in New Zealand for a farewell visit, Brede had rallied and turned up with two kayaks provisioned for a week's trip.
Her guidance, to her children, friends and clients alike, was not just a matter of routes up mountains and rocks. Life for Brede was an opportunity, to be taken and lived to the full. She is survived by her husband, four daughters and four sons.
Brede Arkless , born August 10th, 1939; died March 18th, 2006